Seo Jihyeok looked at the English edition of the undersea base guidebook he had placed beside me and asked,
“Have you finished reading the undersea base guidebook?”
Out of the roughly three hundred pages of the English guidebook, I hadn’t even made it through forty. I gave Seo Jihyeok a slight shake of my head. I could read English. The problem was that the terminology related to the undersea base included far too many words that were utterly unnecessary in everyday life. There were parts where I couldn’t even understand what they were trying to explain. Was the thickness of screws or walls important? Besides, the attention span of a human like me, accustomed to electromagnetic waves, didn’t even last eight seconds.
“It looks like you’re reading it in English, but there’s a Korean translation too. Do you need it?”
“Yes! I absolutely need it!”
When I shouted in excitement, Seo Jihyeok seemed startled for a moment, then laughed.
“I’ll give you the one in my room. But mine’s from a few years ago, so it’ll be a bit different from the latest edition. You should compare them as you read.”
“Yes. Thank you. Reading it in English really slows me down. There’s a separate Korean version?”
“Uh… When they first gave me the English one and called it a guidebook, I didn’t even read it and just shoved it somewhere. I guess our team leader lost his mind after seeing the state of the team members, because a month later he came back with a Korean version. Then he told us if we didn’t memorize it front to back within a week, we should assume we’d be kicked out of here, so I read it in a rush. I did highlight a few things in mine, but other than that it should be in decent condition. I’ll bring it to you after treatment.”
“That would be a huge help. My translator can’t translate documents.”
Seo Jihyeok looked at the old translator hanging from my ear like an earring and blinked. It was so outdated that I felt a little embarrassed, but wasn’t having one better than not? I hurriedly added another sentence.
“The ones that can translate documents are expensive.”
“That’s true.”
“When you come next time, I’ll have read the book. In return, how about you floss before you come next time, Mr. Seo Jihyeok?”
After teaching Seo Jihyeok in detail how to floss, I told him not to eat sweets as much as possible and placed floss in his hand. A few minutes later, Seo Jihyeok handed me a book with [Undersea Base Guidebook Korean Edition] written across the cover in enormous letters, then left. I was so glad to see Korean that I hugged the book for a long while.
The dental clinic wasn’t exactly crowded, but it wasn’t terribly idle either. First of all, some people booked appointments out of curiosity because they were interested in the first dental clinic to open at the undersea base, but the majority either couldn’t book because their shift schedules didn’t line up, or wanted to hear reviews from people who had visited the clinic before making appointments at their leisure.
Through my patients, I was able to hear now and then just how messed up medical culture was in various countries. In the case of William Erickson from Mining Team 6, he passionately denounced the medical services in the United States. He had come in for cavities, and while baring all his teeth, he made the unreasonable demand that he wanted every last one of them changed to gold by the end of the day. When his momentum faltered slightly at my question of whether he planned to start fasting today, I filled the cavities first and then did scaling.
He said he had never had scaling done before. During the scaling, he clenched and unclenched his fists, squeezing poor Noeul, the orange whale he was hugging, as if he were about to burst. Then, twisting his body of over 180 centimeters like a squid being grilled, he suddenly said he needed to go to the bathroom before I started on his lower teeth, left, and never came back.
I sent him a message saying his treatment wasn’t finished, but there was no reply. Only when the wrinkles on Noeul, who had been crushed into a critical patient, began to smooth out did I finally receive a response. It said he would come back sometime next week. I couldn’t help but laugh at the message he sent saying that there would definitely be a dental drill at the very front of the gates of hell. When I messaged him to take some floss with him, he did not reply.
In the case of Vladimir Sergeyevich Ivanov, the team leader of Team Da who had come from Russia, he showed up carrying alcohol outright. I was greeting him with something like “Welcome” when I failed to realize what it was. I thought what he was drinking from the metal canteen was water, but when I caught the smell and realized it was vodka, I was horrified.
When I held out my hand toward him, the blond man, over 190 centimeters tall and built like a door, obediently handed me the bottle. As I was closing the lid of the canteen that reeked of alcohol, he looked at me strangely, and only then did I realize that he had handed it to me because he was offering me a drink. I shook my head. Then I made him brush his teeth at the sink with a disposable toothbrush and toothpaste, and as I was putting on gloves, the man surprisingly said nothing and brushed, gargled, then lay down in the treatment chair.
The condition of his mouth was a little unusual. To be precise, all six of his front teeth were implants. He was in his mid-thirties and already had six implants, so when I asked him about it, he curved his blond eyebrows and said,
“You probably don’t want to know, Doctor.”
I couldn’t tell whether my translator was simply too outdated, or whether this man had actually said it in such a terrifying tone in Russian. I took that one sentence as my answer and, looking at the lower right molar that had cracked from too much force, asked,
“Didn’t it hurt?”
“Life is pain.”
I was about to give that man even more pain, but then gave up on testing the patience of a person who had brought alcohol into a place where drinking was prohibited. When I told people to raise their hand if it hurt, the American had raised both hands and waved them wildly, but Ivan endured it well, just as though life truly was pain. Noeul, whom I had forcibly placed in his arms, was held far more stably than with the patients before him.
Out of habit, like praising young patients who received dental treatment well, I diligently offered compliments such as, “You endured it well,” but then suddenly realized that the person I was complimenting was a Russian man who drank vodka like water, and soon continued the treatment in silence. In the quiet treatment room, only my feet and hands moved busily.
“You need to come again next week. Until then, don’t eat anything hard. Don’t chew on your right side. Brush your teeth well. And don’t drink.”
Vladimir picked up the canteen I had placed on the table and tucked it into his arms. I had no idea whether he would actually listen to me. Almost out of habit, I tossed a piece of floss to him as he left. The man caught it in midair, frowned, and walked out.
Ever since I discovered a box full of floss, my goal has been to get everyone in the undersea base to brush their teeth with floss. I’m on a salary anyway. It began with the thought that it would be good if patients didn’t appear in the first place, but the beginning has been feeble. Judging by the state of the teeth of the people who came to the dental clinic over the past two days, there did seem to be some who flossed, but not many.
I had to have hope. Fewer than ten people had visited. There was no need to despair already, was there? I was looking forward to this new hobby spreading through the gloomy undersea base. Or perhaps a ghost story would be born among the patients, about a dentist who threatened them to floss properly because human teeth didn’t grow in three overlapping rows like a shark’s.
No matter how diligently you brush your teeth, how thoroughly you floss, how little sugar you eat, and how well you rinse your mouth with mouthwash, there is no solution for direct impact. Over three days, I treated five very unusual men. Their front teeth were broken, their molars were cracked, or they appeared to have been hit hard enough in the jaw that their teeth were loose.
There was even one who had something lodged in his tooth that was not a prosthetic. They were all men from the mining teams and engineering teams. When I asked where on earth they had been and what they had been doing to end up like this, all kinds of bizarre excuses poured out. I was walking and fell, and there happened to be the edge of a stair in front of me; I fell out of bed; I don’t know; I just woke up suddenly and it was like this, and so on.
Whether I looked at it from the right or from the left, this was the result of punching. And looking at the condition of the people coming to the clinic, I could tell that the opponent who had done this was tall and right-handed. None of them came in swaggering and boasting; all of them were filled with rage. In other words, every one of the people I treated had tasted bitter defeat once or twice.
After treating the old, neglected injuries and impacts first, the most recent act of violence arrived in the treatment room. Yesterday’s loser had loose teeth, for one thing, but his lower molar was also broken. I examined the broken molar, let out a sigh, and said,
“That guy must have heavy hands.”
Violence was not tolerated at the undersea base either. But I had no idea where on earth they were going around throwing punches like this. At my question, Tyler from Engineering Team A began speaking heatedly. That lunatic swung first. Ah, of course I hit him more. Just wait and see. I’ll make him wander around like a jellyfish without a single tooth. I’ll make him suck down soup for the rest of his life!
Just as I was calming down the two-meter giant who was huffing with rage, and wondering whether I should somehow piece together the fantastically shattered molar like Tetris and keep using it, or whether it was hopeless and I should pull it, I heard a curse I recognized. Shin Haeryang, that fucking bastard!
“Did the team leader of Engineering Team Ga do this?”
Then Tyler, perhaps because he felt wronged and now had someone willing to listen to his story, began pouring out every curse he knew and cursing the other man. I had heard that Engineering Team A was made up of Canadians, but it was the first time I had ever seen a Canadian, whom I had imagined to have a peaceful atmosphere, so passionately pray for another person’s misfortune outside of hockey.
From what I heard, Engineering Team Ga never yielded even over the tiniest matters, there was no compromise at all, and their team leader, Shin Haeryang, personally stepped forward to incite disputes. Since these were the words of someone who had come in after getting beaten up, I was listening with about half of it filtered out, but now he was enthusiastically cursing all of Engineering Team Ga.
Thanks to him, I was able to memorize the names of all seven members of Engineering Team Ga, whom I had never even met except for Seo Jihyeok. You must have had a very hard time. It must hurt, but you endured it very well until now. Anyone who provides any kind of service to people becomes part of the service industry. I soullessly spat out three or four flattering lines used on customers, then cut him off by saying that because of the next appointment, we had to start right away.
Sounds that failed to become language filled the treatment room. When the long yet short treatment ended, Tyler shuddered and got up from the medical chair. I had saved the molar, but Noeul’s face, held in Tyler’s arms, was completely crumpled.
“Rinse your mouth. Then you may go. I’ll see you next week.”
“I’m never coming back!”
I patted Tyler’s hand, saying that he had endured it well despite his tearful expression, and placed floss in it. The people of the undersea base prioritized equipment repairs and mining, so their faces were fairly rough and their builds tended to be large, but surprisingly, when I placed floss in their hands, they didn’t throw it away and obediently carried it out. Maybe it was because they were dazed after treatment, or maybe as they fled this place, they unconsciously took whatever was handed to them.
People often lose courage simply by making a dental appointment. I poured as much encouragement and praise as I could onto the people who came to the dental clinic. After all, just coming to the dentist instead of avoiding their condition was already impressive.